with a flower in my hand
by p y n q u e
Summary: They're caught in the rain while they're at the park, acting like children because being a grown-up is boring. / / or, springtime.


**with a flower in my hand.  
**

After winter comes spring, so here we are. I'm not going to officially call these things—_baby, it's cold out side _and this and stuff to come—a collection, but they follow the same theme.

**warnings/notes: **human elements. They're still humanoid and such, but there's no spring sex drive. This is supposed to be innocent… This takes place in March, on different days. In most, it'll still be cold; in a few, there might be a little snow.

* * *

**i.**

She kneels down, arm reaching out gently. Her blue eyes rest on a flower—simply a bud, but still a flower—skinny and green, poking out of the dirty snow. Her pink lips spread into a smile as she pushes snow away from the base of the plant, the ice crystals melting and leaking through her mittens. She stands up, and puts her hands in her pockets, feeling proud of herself.

"What's up, Vic?" Plato asks, stepping toward her. Victoria just looks at him and smiles, then takes his hand. He cocks his eyebrow, a smile playing at his chapped lips. With her free hand, Victoria points and the baby flower—her grin hasn't weakened at all.

"It's _spring_," she whispers.

**ii.**

He lays down on the top of a hill beneath a tree—it's a pleasant day, not cold, not hot. The wind blows hard, making uncut grass tickle his sides. He turns his head and looks at her, smiling. He looks back at the sky and says, "It looks like a lobster."

"Hmm?" Electra says, plucking grass absentmindedly.

"The cloud. It looks like a lobster," Pouncival repeats, flipping over so he can see her. He's sure he somewhat resembles a fish on land as he does it, but he doesn't care. She's so pretty, and she's his, so he _really _doesn't care. She laughs at him, and it doesn't sound like what candy or bubble gum would if they made noise, it sounds more like bacon, but he relishes in the sound anyway—because he's too in love to care.

**iii.**

It rains. It rains really hard, and no one can say that _April showers bring May flowers _because it's March, not April. They're caught in the rain while they're at the park, acting like children because being a grown-up is boring. He's trying to use the teeter-totter when he feels a drop on his forehead and his smile's _gone_. Her laugh stops at the same time, and all of a sudden thousands of little droplets are pouring from the sky.

His smile's back, and he hops off the teeter totter, (wincing as his ankle painfully hits the painted metal), and he runs awkwardly over to her, laughing like a child. He grabs her hand, and leads her over to a tree, and they're totally soaked and trapped under this big oak tree, but they're smiling and laughing and their clothes cling to their fur that clings to their skin.

"I love you," he says, looking her straight in the eye, because he means it, he's always meant it; he's just bad at showing it (it's cliché, but they're corny people). He pushes her damp head fur out of her face so he can see her—she's all surprised like he's never said it before, so before she says anything he kisses her. It's a pansy kiss, like in Disney movies, but a kiss all the same.

She pulls away and for a second he worries he's made a mistake, but before he can ask what's up, she says, "I love you more," or at least he thinks he does—it's a little hard to register as she tackles him to the ground.

**iv.**

Sometimes she wonders where her youth went, where these pounds came from—Jennyanydots wasn't always a Gumbie Cat. She was pretty, all big green eyes and full, red lips. It's hard to imagine now, she thinks—her only memories of that time are bittersweet, revived by faded pictures. But the memories attached to those photos will be gone soon, she knows. Till then, she clings to them like a baby clings to a bottle. (Oh, what she'd give to be a baby.)

She drinks her coffee slowly, letting the dark brown liquid burn her throat and leave it raw. She holds a half-eaten lemon cookie in her free hand, watches the colors of the sunset paint the sky—to the east is darkness, to the west is freedom.

She sighs, sets the cookie on her plate. She's getting old, she decides, and it's much too late for her to be up. And she ignore the fact that that means more than she intended.

_It's much too late for me to be up._

**v.**

He stands outside the theatre for hours. He just stares, doesn't move. He might be thinking, but she can't really tell. She wouldn't blame him if he wasn't, though she would question how. His memories are ash, a giant pile of gray staining the rainbow that is the spring. She's not sure if she should hold him, rub his back and tell him it's okay, even if she knows it isn't, for him.

"It was so beautiful," he speaks. His voice is so old and tired, she takes pity on him. He's fragile, like skin and fur glued to a skeleton. "It was so pretty," he says, quieter. "_In it's time._" She pretends that has no deep meaning, that it doesn't relate to himself, his age. She stays silent.

"I know, papa." She says, using that age-old nickname. For so long, he wasn't a _grandfather_—he was Gus, the theatre cat, simply someone she told her friends about. But he's a grandfather again—like the flowers that come in spring, so did this. She's tempted to smile, but she doesn't—instead she bends over and picks up and dandelion, bright yellow with thousands of tiny petals.

"I love you, papa," she whispers, taking Gus's hand in her own. A plane passes overhead, and the two look up, their movements synchronized. His fingers are thin and curled like broken popsicle sticks. They look at the clouds, puffy and white, swirling in the sky, all the way into space.

"Jelly," Gus begins, "they're waiting for me. Up there, in Heaviside, Jelly. I think spring would be a nice time to go." He pauses. Her heart twists in her chest, her lungs quiver. "If that's quite all right."

She turns away, gentling pulling him, so they can continue on. She just nods, and decides she can cry later. Everything has to happen later.  
_

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_

**a/n: **Again, don't like the last one.

Next comes summer, which shouldn't be depressing at all. The characters in the third one are supposed to be Bombalurina and Tugger; it doesn't really fit anyone else.


End file.
